Digest: Platform churns out natural gas

Published 5:30 am, Saturday, July 21, 2007

ENERGY

Platform churns out natural gas

Independence Hub, the world's deepest production platform, operating in 8,000 feet of water in the Gulf of Mexico, has begun producing natural gas, its owners and operators said Friday.

The $2 billion project, which includes the platform and a 134-mile pipeline to transport the gas, is expected to reach production of 1 billion cubic feet of gas a day by year's end — roughly 2 percent of U.S. natural gas production.

Woodlands-based Anadarko Petroleum Corp. operates the platform, which has living quarters for 16 people and is 120 miles southeast of Biloxi, Miss.

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MEDIA

Redstone critical of his daughter

NEW YORK — A family rift at Viacom and CBS Corp. widened Friday as Sumner Redstone, the chairman of both companies, took aim at his daughter Shari, who had been expected to succeed him, in a letter faxed to Forbes magazine.

Shari Redstone, 53, serves as a director and vice chairman of both companies. Her father is 84.

She reportedly had had differences with her father over corporate governance issues, including her effort to tie executive compensation more closely to financial performance.

"While my daughter talks of good governance, she apparently ignores the cardinal rule of good governance that the boards of the two public companies, Viacom and CBS, should select my successor," Redstone wrote in his letter.

Shari Redstone didn't return a call seeking comment.

INVESTING

Williams Cos. plans to use partnership

Williams Cos., a pipeline company, plans to form a partnership that will take over some of its interstate gas-shipping assets, shielding them from taxes and lifting their market value.

The master limited partnership will have a stake in the company's 3,900-mile Northwest Pipeline system as its initial asset, Tulsa, Okla.-based Williams said Friday. The company also said it will buy back as much as $1 billion in stock.

COURT

Harsher lawsuit hits Pfizer

ABUJA, NIGERIA — Government lawyers filed a new $7 billion civil lawsuit Friday against Pfizer, adding a more serious fraud charge to their allegations that the U.S. drug maker did not properly obtain consent from families while testing an experimental drug on their children.

The government has accused Pfizer of taking advantage of a 1996 meningitis epidemic to test a drug without authorization or the full understanding of the families involved — allegedly contributing to the deaths of some children and sickening others. Pfizer denies wrongdoing.